[Turnell has written extensively on French literature of the last three centuries. In the following excerpt, he cites Andre Gide's criticisms of Eugénie Grandet in his own short critique of that novel.]

'It does not seem to me to be one of the best of Balzac's novels or to deserve the extraordinary favour it has enjoyed,' remarks Gide of Eugénie Grandet. 'The style is extremely mediocre; the characters could scarcely be more summary; the dialogue is conventional and often inacceptable. . . . Alone the story of old Grandet's speculations seems to me to be masterly; but that is perhaps because I am not competent in such matters.'

Eugénie Grandet was completed a year before Balzac began Le Père Goriot. The style is undoubtedly 'sticky' in places, but it does not seem to me that an occasional awkwardness in the writing is sufficient grounds on which to condemn the book. M. Gide's other criticisms apply to most of Balzac's novels. None of them is completely satisfactory even in its own genre. They are, in so far as they are successful, only good in parts. Nor does it seem to me that an understanding or lack of understanding of financial machinations ought to affect our judgment. I have probably less skill in this respect than M. Gide, but I, too, find the account of Grandet's activities 'masterly'; and the book as a whole seems to me to be one of Balzac's most successful works. For here there is no straining, as there is in the Père Goriot, to fit the characters into their background; the characters—the principals as well as the minor characters—are certainly there. They belong to their province, to their town, to their community. There is nothing forced or melodramatic about the description of the damp, cold, old-fashioned house at Saumur:

... cette maison pâle, froide, silencieuse, située en haut de la ville, et abritée par les ruines des remparts.

[.. . the pale, cold, silent house standing above the town and sheltered by the ruins of the ramparts.]

For once the three adjectives are necessary and place the house before us. The house and its owner belong to one another:

Les manières de cet homme étaient fort simples. Il parlait peu. Généralement, il exprimait ses idées par de petites phrases sentencieuses et dites d'une voix douce. .. . Au physique, Grandet était un homme de cinq pieds, trapu, carré, ayant des mollets de douze pouces de circonférence, des rotules noueuses et de larges épaules; son visage était rond, tanné, marqué de petite vérole; son menton était droit, ses lèvres n'offraient aucune sinuosité, et ses dents étaient blanches; ses yeux avaient l'expression calme et dévoratrice que le peuple accorde au basilic. . . . Son nez, gros par le bout, supportait une loupe veinée que le vulgaire disait, non sans raison, pleine de malice. Cette figure annonçait une finesse dangereuse, une probité sans chaleur, l'égoïsme d'un homme habitué à concentrer ses sentiments dans la jouissance de l'avarice et sur le seul être qui lui fût réellement quelque chose, sa fille Eugénie, sa seule héritière. . . . Aussi, quoique de mœurs faciles et molles en apparence, M. Grandet avait-il un caractère de bronze. Toujours vêtu de la même manière, qui le voyait aujourd'hui le voyait tel qu'il était depuis 1791.

[The man's behaviour was simplicity itself. He spoke little. Usually he expressed himself in brief sententious phrases, delivered in a gentle tone. . . . Physically, Grandet was five feet in height, thickset and squarely built, his calves over twelve inches in diameter, his knees bony and his shoulders broad. His face was round and marked by smallpox; his chin straight, his lips level, his teeth white; his eyes had the calm devouring expression which the people attribute to the basilisk. . . . His nose, which was fat at the end, had a veined knob on it which the common people alleged, not without reason, was full of malice. This face suggested a dangerous finesse, a probity devoid of any warmth of feeling, the selfishness of a man who concentrated all his feelings on the enjoyment of avarice and on the only being who meant anything to him—his daughter and sole heir, Eugénie. Thus, though his behaviour was easy and gentle, M. Grandet had a character of iron. He was always dressed in the same fashion: anyone who saw him to-day, saw him as he had been since 1791.]

The description of Grandet is free from all Balzac's usual faults. It has the economy and precision of a seventeenth-century 'character'. There is complete correspondence between the inner and the outer man. The grave, hard exterior reflects his preoccupation with a single dominating passion. Once Balzac has described the character of the miser, which clearly leaves no place for psychological development, he merely has to invent the actions and gestures which will bring him to life and, so to speak, set him in motion. He therefore concentrates like Dickens on a few tell-tale gestures which fix themselves in the mind—the maddening stutter, the horrible 'Ta ta ta ta', the daily distribution of 'rations', the meanness over fuel and candles which all lead back to the miser's absorbing passion:

'Ta ta ta ta!' dit Grandet, 'voilà les bêtises qui commencent. Je vois avec peine, mon neveu, vos jolies mains blanches.'

Il lui montra les espèces d'épaules de mouton que la nature lui avait mises au bout des bras.

'Voilà des mains faites pour ramasser des écus!'

['Ta, ta, ta, ta!' said Grandet. 'You're starting to be silly. It pains me to see your nice white hands, nephew.'

He showed him objects like shoulders of mutton which nature had attached to the ends of his arms.

'These are the sort of hands made to rake in the shekels!']

M. Gide, we know, has complained about the faintness of the other characters in the book. Their limitations are due partly to the nature of the undertaking and partly to Balzac's artistic shortcomings. The picture of the old servant, of mother and daughter spending their days over their needlework in the dim house and of the factions between the des Grassins and the Cruchots seems to me to be admirable of its kind and at its particular level. They have on the whole sufficient life to throw into relief the activities of Grandet, and if we are not told a great deal about them it is largely because there is not much to tell.

Where, it seems to me, the novel is most open to criticism is in the account of the love affair between Eugénie and her cousin. This is the description of her emotional awakening:

Cette physionomie calme, colorée, bordée d'une lueur comme une jolie fleur éclose, reposait l'âme, communiquait le charme de la conscience qui s'y reflétait, et commandait le regard. Eugénie était encore sur la rive de la vie où fleurissent les illusions enfantines, où se cueillent les marguerites avec des délices plus tard inconnues.

[Her calm fresh-complexioned face, which was surrounded by a glow like a lovely flower in full bloom, was restful to the spirit; it made you feel the charm of the mind reflected in it and compelled attention. Eugénie was on the threshold of life where childish illusions still flourish and where you pick daisies with a delight which is unknown in later years.]

There is no real penetration into her feelings here. The repeated reference to flowers merely gives the passage a vague, facile charm For Eugénie and Charles are to a considerable degree conventional figures and like Vautrin represent the alien element which Balzac often incorporated uncritically into his work. Yet if Charles is not closely observed, he possesses sufficient life for Balzac's purpose. Balzac, as we know from his other books, is master of a certain form of social comedy. Without probing deeply into psychological motives, he is often admirable in his descriptions of the gaucheries of the young man making his début in society. Rastignac's clumsy efforts to ingratiate himself with the great seem to me to be much the best part of Le Père Goriot. In Eugénie Grandet we see the situation in reverse. Whatever the shortcomings of the portrait of Charles Grandet, we do feel the full impact of the dandy on the narrow provincial society of Saumur.

Still, we must agree with M. Gide that what is impressive about the novel is old Grandet and his speculations and that once he is dead the interest evaporates.